On 04/14/2014 07:02 PM, Tom Metro wrote: > I receive ads from 123securityproducts.com. They seem to be typical of > sites selling security cameras, although I only rarely look at the other > sites, as I haven't been actively shopping for equipment in this space > for a few years. > > The vast majority of the products they advertise are still analog > cameras, usually sold in multi-camera bundles, with a central DVR > (running some buggy Linux firmware, often with no source code provided). > > The ad I received today was one of the rare few promoting an actual IP > camera. It has better resolution than you typically see. Instead of > merely VGA or QVGA, its a 2.43 MP sensor, with a fixed lens. (A 2000 x > 1241 pixel sensor, outputting 1920 x 1080 using H.264 at 30 FPS.) It > also supports Power-over-Ethernet, which is good, but they want over > $300 for this: > > https://www.123securityproducts.com/knc-hdi47b37.html > > I get that pro-grade hardware carries a premium, but the capabilities of > this camera are likely blown away by a sub-$50 Android smartphone, which > likely comes with a 3 MP camera, plus has WiFi and GSM radios.
Not so minor nit: Show me a sub $50 Android smartphone. And by that I mean you buy the phone for sub-$50 and that's that. No contract or commitments. Or are you talking used? Even there I think $50 might be a stretch. Maybe a tablet from China. That would still have wifi. > It seems easy to imagine how one could take a low-end smartphone SoC, > combined with a high volume 5 MP camera module made for phones, and add > a wired Ethernet port with PoE and some IR LEDS for night illumination, > with production costs under $100, and a retail price of around $100. > Replace Android with a very minimalist Linux or other open source RTOS > optimized for reliability, and you'd have a great camera platform. I don't know why you would go through all that work. Couldn't you write an Android app that sent the camera to a stream over wifi without hacking anything? _______________________________________________ Hardwarehacking mailing list [email protected] http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/hardwarehacking
